The physical memory is your hard drive. where you store pics and stuff. I think the alert you got was for virtual memory or RAM, and the alert can pop up at random times depending on what programs you are using or even how many windows you have open. Generally should not be a problem.

If you get this often, then you'll need to upgrade your computer because it's to old for your current purposes.

I just had son take a look at what you had posted with physical and virtual memory. I have been corrected. The physical memory they are talking about there is your RAM, and the virtual memory is 'provided' by your hard drive. Son's exact words were, "Holy *poop* that's an old machine!"

Is it still popping up? what are you doing when it comes up? What OS are you running?

Gotta agree with Keista's son... although I wouldn't have used that exact language...

Total Physical Memory 256.00 MB = not nearly enough for most modern expectations.

Depending on which physical computer you have, it may be possible to double your RAM without putting too many $$ into it... depends on exactly "how old" the old machine is. (Tech explanation... the version of the Intel chip or equivalent determines how much RAM can be accessed, along with a million other things - lots of computers in the old days had a chip that would handle 512 mb RAM but shipped with 256 mb Ram - the extra memory was an "option" - and RAM at that point was expensive)

Just for comparison, the machine I'm on right this minute is my newest one... at it has 4 GB RAM... 1024 MB = 1 GB ... so my machine has something like 16x the memory of yours... and MINE runs out of memory sometimes. This one is a laptop with limited room... desktops are coming now with 8GB+ of RAM.

In reality, the only reason RAM becomes a problem is:
1) if you're doing a lot of stuff with graphics - because graphics are majorly RAM intensive, or
2) if you're doing a lot of stuff on the internet - because the internet is overloaded with extraneous stuff of all sorts.

If RAM is too low, system spends a lot of time "swapping" stuff from RAM to hard-drive and back - and not enough time doing "real work". There are checks built into the system, and when things take too long, the computer tries to take corrective action.

A bite can be used for lots of things, and what it can represent depends on how big it is. For many many years, a easy child "byte" was 8 "bits", and for comparison, represented one character (numbers are a whole different logic, as are machine instructions). Now, a "byte" can be 8, 16, 32, or 64 bits.

The good news is that for basic applications, you can get a 'decent' machine for $200-$300. Since you just need the machine, and not the monitor or keyboard and such, a good upgrade is easily doable.

by the way Even if your current machine can accept a RAM upgrade, I think it would be really hard to find the correct old smaller RAM and ultimately not worth the time or even small investment it would take.

Make this machine last until Black Friday then find a replacement deal.

Thanks. Fortunately I have a capable computer guy. Guess I'll give him a call next week. by the way, the slave computer is almost never used for internet and 90% of the time is used just for business invoicing...and games husband plays. Weird.
DDD